Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Every
life has some days that seem to bend time. Days that not only linger in our
memories long after the sun as set but that take on a life of its own. They
defy logic or expectations. They are so good they must have happened to someone
else.

Only
they didn’t. They happened to you. Really.

You
have to remember it, don’t you? How could you not? The memory of it has carved
a deep gash in your soul. It’s as much a part of you as your right hand.

Stealing
into game 6 of the World Series in 1980 with my brother Paul was one such day.
And playing softball against Bruce Springsteen in the summer of 1975, well
before he became an American megastar, was another. I’ve told those stories
many times to many people. They always bring a smile.

This
is another such day and it’s a story I mention less frequently. But in its own
way, it’s just as iconic as seeing your childhood team win the World Series in
person or meeting your favorite rock star on the field of competition in a
friendly ball game.

After
graduating from Loyola University in New Orleans, I flew to London in the
summer of 1973 to take a six-week graduate course in “Modern British Fiction”
in early July. When I landed at Heathrow, grabbed a glossy weekly called
“Timeout,” devoted to pop culture and critical commentary.

I
casually flipped through the magazine and came to an ad that immediately caught
my eye. “Van Morrison, live at the Rainbow Theatre! July 23rd and 24th!”
was the headline. But in thick, 60 point block letters, stamped over the headline
were these soul-wounding words: “SOLD OUT!” My heart sank.

Van
Morrison was coming to London!!!!Besides the Beatles or the Stones, there was no one I wanted to see perform
more than Van the Man. He’d released a series of astonishing recordings around
this time, including “Astral Weeks”, “Moondance” and “Tupelo Honey”. The three
of them constituted part of the soundtrack of my college years and they’d
become deeply imbedded in the fabric of my teenage psyche. I had to try to see
him. I stored the dates away in my mind and waited for the concert dates to
arrive.

On
the evening of July 23rd, I walked through the university cafeteria
seeking someone to take a tube ride with me down to the south side of the city to
try to see Van. To my astonishment, none of the London U. students I knew were eager
to queue up in a standing room only line for two hours before the show. A few
of my summer acquaintances knew the performer’s music, but none were as
infatuated with his brand of Irish soul music as I was.

One
fellow, a Nigerian student named Alfa, overheard me asking the others about
Morrison tickets and he said he would go with me if I would wait until
tomorrow. He had some studying to do that night….but he invited me to come to
his dorm room after 10 and promised we could listen to “Astral Weeks” and play
chess. So that’s what we did. He dropped the spindle over the record and
“Moondance” never sounded so good. Van was in London! He might be playing this
very song even as we listened to it in Afra’s dorm room!

I
don’t recall who won the chess match. It required listening to two of Van’s
albums to get through our game. But by the end of the evening, Afra’s record
collection had worked its magic on me. There was no way I was going to miss Van
Morrison the next night.

When
I grabbed a copy of the London Times at breakfast, the paper’s rock critic had written
a glowing review of the first night’s show. The Times’ critic compared
Morrison’s performance to the kind of funky spontaneity of the Band’s best live
performances. That comparison and reference hooked me. I had to go.

Afra
and I took the tube down to south London, where the Rainbow was located. The
train was packed with long-haired flower people who had the same intention as
we did. We asked everyone we saw if they had extra tickets for sale. One wag said
he had one but his asking price was seven pounds, a price that seems exorbitant
to me at the time (equivalent to $18 U.S. dollars when $5 was a standard rock
concert price.) It would have been a bargain had I paid it. I didn’t know that
at the time.

When
we stepped off the underground, the exterior of the Rainbow Theatre was a
carnival scene. The smell of marijuana wafted through the dank summer air and “brown-eyed
girls” tossed Frisbees in the middle of the street, long tangles of shaggy hair
cascading down their backs; their necklace bells chiming brightly as they ran
after errant tosses.

Afra
and I headed for the front of the concert venue looking for the standing room
only line but we suddenly stopped cold. The queue was a mad scramble of pushing
and shoving fans, fighting to get near the front of a small door on the side of
the theatre. The price of admission was only two pounds, but already more than
200 people were in line. Afra shrugged his shoulders and started walking down
the long line shouting out “Who has tickets!??!”

Despairing,
I headed in the opposite direction and found myself under the Rainbow’s awning,
staring through the glass doors of the auditorium at the lucky few who were
already mingling inside. This dark haired kid about my age chose that very
moment to come out of the theatre. We stood there looking at one another,
confused by the circumstances of the moment. I knew him. He knew me. But how?
Where had I seen his face? Who was he?

Then
it came to me. His name drifted out of the subconscious depths of my head. Dyer
O’Connor. But how did I know him?

“Hey,”
he said. “Don’t you go to Loyola? Weren’t you in American History with me?”

Yes.
I was. I must have been. That’s how I knew him. “What are you doing here in
London?” he wanted to know. I explained I was taking a summer class at the
University of London. That I was a big fan of Van Morrison but the tickets to
the concert had been sold out before I landed in London. I was hoping to snag a
scalped ticket.

“I
have one for you!” he said. “My date canceled on me.”

I
looked over my shoulder for Alfa. He had disappeared into the anxious throng at
the standing room only line. Meanwhile, I had joined the lucky few. I passed
through the doors of the Rainbow Theatre with Dyer O’Conner, a guy I barely
knew. He held an extra ticket in his hand and passed it over to a tuxedoed
teenage ticket taker with bad teeth.

I
reached for my wallet to pay for it. “No.No worries,” Dyer said. “My treat. Glad for the company. Glad to give it
to a Van fan.”

Our
seats were in the balcony, not more than eight or nine rows from the rail. The
Rainbow had been designed as a gilded palace of Hollywood films in the early
1930s and was called the Astoria Cinema. Crystal chandeliers hung from the
ceiling, if memory serves, and replicas of Greek statues were situated in nooks
on the interior walls of the theater. It looked a bit like the Tower Theater in
Upper Darby. Our seats were comfortable but covered by faded red velvet, worn
down over time by the fannies of thousands of moviegoers.

The
movie palace had been converted to a musical theater only a few years before.
The Who played the first rock show there in December of 1971.Eric Clapton, Queen, the Sweet, Little Feat
and Bob Marley and the Wailers all recorded live album there in the mid-‘70s.
The venue is also believed to be the first place Jimi Hendrix burned a guitar
on stage.

Dyer
and I spent a few moments getting to know one another, trading tales about our Loyola
experiences. His dad worked for Exxon in London so London was his home when he
wasn’t in New Orleans. We were both chagrined to have spent four years in the
same class at a school without ever having a conversation until that
serendipitous meeting at the Rainbow. He’d majored in history. I majored in
journalism, so our paths didn’t cross much. But we recognized one another
immediately when he stepped through the doors of the theater.

A
journal I kept of my trip to Britain that summer has this entry for July 24th:
“I can’t really remember what songs he did. Some from the new LP, Hard Nose the Highway. Also, “I Just
Want to Make Love To You” – “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Gloria” – “Moondance” –
“Caravan” – “Everything” -- “Wild Night” – “Moonshine Whiskey” – “Domino” –
“Gypsy” and three encores. He finished with “Listen to the Lion” ….It was his
first London appearance in eight years and I got to go! I still hardly believe
it!”

The
band Van brought during his summer of ’73 tour was called the Caledonia Soul
Orchestra. It was not a standard rock quartet. The bass, lead guitar, piano and
drums were complimented by horns and strings: a sax and trumpet player; a trio
of violins, a viola player and a cello player.The ensemble played Morrison’s own compositions with delicate finesse.
But they wailed on a series of blues tributes Morrison sung to the American
R&B heroes of his youth: Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Willie Dixon and Sonny Boy
Williamson.

The
Rainbow concert seemed to teeter between two contrasting styles of music: the
airy, light touches of “Warm Love” and “These Dreams of You” (which highlighted
the delicate playing of the strings) and the brassy bombast of “Gloria”, “Wild
Night” and the blues tributes. I had seen Morrison perform 18 months earlier at
the Villanova Field House with a much different band. He was nervous that night,
unsure of himself. There were times he seemed afraid to even grab the
microphone. This may have been just part of his “act” but Morrison has a
reputation for being temperamental in his live performances and the uncertainty
of his show at Villanova seemed to be part of the man, not part of an act.

His
bearing at the Rainbow was much, much different. He was confident, not just a
performer but a conductor. The performers backing him were in close orbit with
him and he directed them with a casual nod of his head or a sharp glance. I had
never witnessed any concert, any performance, quite like it. He held the
audience in thrall and, during some quiet moments in the performance, the performance
felt like a church service. The audience
began to engage the performer in call and response and small talk.

Late
into the show, with the smell of marijuana hovering thick around us, Dyer
pulled out a joint, lit it and passed it over to me. “Here,” he said, “try
this. It’s from Kenya.” I drew a long hit and passed it back. We took turns until
it became a tiny glowing ember that Dyer crushed under his boot heel. I knew instantly
I had never smoked anything nearly so potent before. I had been given a very
smooth and potent form of herb. I wouldn’t share this recognition of something
so great, so potent, until I tried a 12-year old single malt scotch, aged in an
oaken cask, when I was in my mid-40s. Dyer’s weed was better.

If
the music hadn’t already transported us into the mystic, the potent weed surely
did. Suddenly we were not just listening to
music, we were into the music. It
wasn’t that I was suddenly stoned. Really. But a revelation struck me. We --
me, Dyer and the entire audience – had become part of the performance. Van
wasn’t just in tune with his backing performers. He was tuned into us, too.

There
were some moments, during his final tune, “Cypress Avenue” when the silence became
too much for the audience to bear; when Morrison seemed to be waiting for
someone to give him a signal to perform. This happened on several occasions
during the journey of this amazing song. The effect felt magical…. And you can
hear it if you listen to the song on “It’s Too Late to Stop Now”, a recording of this concert that was released
in February of 1974.

About
halfway through this epic version of “Cypress Avenue”, which goes on a
mind-bending journey for 10 minutes, Morrison sings a phrase that I still hear
as “And they say in France!” Then he pauses. I am uncertain if this is precisely
what he is singing or not. Some wags in the balcony call out to him “France!” I
was stoned, I know, and I have no proof of this except what I hear on the
record, but I swear it was me and Dyer, feeling the effects of his Kenyan stick,
shouting down to the stage from our balcony seats. He repeats the verse: “And
they say in France!” We, now joined by half a dozen other emboldened (possibly
stoned?) members of the audience, shout back the invocation: “France!” Morrison
does his lyric a third time. One more time “France!” comes back to him.

About
two minutes later someone shouts down from the balcony, “Cook, Van, cook!” And about a minute after that someone else calls
out to him: “Turn it on!”Van hesitates
ever so slightly after hearing this and makes the crowd wait impatiently for
him to continue the song. He bends low, gripping the microphone and savoring the
moment, milking it for all its worth, before he finally chuckles: “It’s already
turned on”. The concert stops while a roar of appreciative hilarity commences
to endorse his quip.

Morrison,
in complete command of both the audience and the moment, improvises a short series
of vamps and tossed-off asides to the audience before his locomotive of a band crescendos
in a heightened, audacious wall of noise that ends with Morrison shouting out
his signature phrase at the climax of the song, giving his album its name:
“It’s too late to stop now!” Then he exits stage right, striding like a lion.

It
was a moment – a concert – I can never forget. Of course, having a record of
the concert makes the details easier to assimilate and provides me with other
half-remembered details of that eventful evening. When the record came out
seven months later, I was back in New Orleans. I had long forgotten how buzzed
I was when Morrison began playing “Cypress Avenue”. But when the needle hit that part of the
record where Dyer and I shout out “France!” I realized I had become a tiny
thread in a magnificent quilt. I could hear myself on “It’s Too Late to Stop
Now”.

In
the years since July 24th, 1973, “It’s Too Late to Stop Now” has
become regaled by critics as one of the greatest live performances of the rock
era. Half of the songs on the two-discs are not songs I can remember hearing
and were likely recorded in Los Angeles in June of that year. Because of the
breadth of the material on the record – it covered songs from his most creative
artistic period in the late 1960s and early 1970s; those five nods to African
American R&B singers and hits from his days with Them -- it was considered
a vital overview of his career up to that point. But it also showcased Morrison
at the peak of his powers as a singer and the defining document of what Morrison
himself called “Celtic soul”.

I
knew I had heard something remarkable that night. My intuition was confirmed
when I picked up a 1979 book called “Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert
Island” edited by Greil Marcus. Its central conceit was this: if you were
stranded on a desert island and could only bring one album with you, which one
would you bring? The book’s second essay
was by the arts editor of the Village Voice, a woman named M. Mark, who chose
“Too Late to Stop Now” as her desert island disc.

It’s
not the disc I would bring to an island if I could only bring one….but only
because I don’t need to hear it again. I’ve committed it to all to memory.

Dyer
and I took the tube back to northern London, chatting about our recollections
of what we had just witnessed. I have little doubt the underground was filled
with other Van fans, nodding their heads in stoned inebriation, just as blown
away by what they had witnessed as we were. We got off at different stops and I
was sure I would see him again before I left London. I didn’t. And when I got
back to New Orleans, I lost his address, scribbled on the back of the July 24th
Rainbow Theater concert ticket.

But
his act of kindness and generosity was something I never forgot. And every time
I played the album, in my home or on my car CD player, I remembered sharing
both that concert with him and the most magnificent weed I have ever
experienced.

I
wanted to talk to him before I published this story. I hoped he was still alive
to thank him. I looked for him on Facebook without any luck. I Googled his
name. Nothing turned up. Finally, about a week ago, I contacted the alumni
office of our alma mater. A helpful woman named Monique tracked him down and
sent him word that I wanted to talk to him. But due to what she called “privacy
issues” she couldn’t give me his phone number or email address. She said she
had tried to call him but noted “he didn’t pick up. He probably thought we were
asking him for money.” She wanted to know why I wanted to talk to him, so I
gave her a short email version of this story, which she loved reading.

About
two days later, my cell phone rang. It was Dyer. He is retired from the oil
business (his dad helped him land a job in the industry) and lives in Colorado
now with his wife, Boo, who he met during his first week at Loyola.She, he told me, was the “canceled date” that
allowed me to have a seat at rock history’s table.

When
I asked what he remembered about the show, he told me we were sitting in the
balcony, stage right. He sounded good…although he did not remember yelling out
“France” during the show. He said he still goes to a ton of concerts, many of
them at nearby Red Rocks, a stunning Colorado concert venue.

And
yes, he still smokes weed.

“Colorado
was the first state in the union to legalize it,” he proudly noted.

I haven’t imbibed marijuana in many years, but
when I next get out to Colorado, I know a guy who will gladly share a stick
with me. And I bet I know what album he’ll put on the turn table.

3 comments:

What a great story! What an amazing, fantastic journey of a song. That recording of Cypress is almost certainly the best live rock song ever recorded, which might make it the best song in history. And you were PART of it! YOU were "France" that's cool as hell. That song takes me on a trip every time I hear it. Don't ever stop telling that story, don't ever stop listening to that record. It knocked me out of my socks the FIRST time I heard it and it get better ever time.

About Me

I teach media studies at West Chester University.
I am the oldest of 11 children. I am a fiscal conservative but liberal on social issues. I embrace people of all races, creeds and colors. I think of myself as a people-person.
I can hold a discussion with most people about: politics, world religions, sports, popular culture, popular music, family dynamics and family psychology, the distribution of food and wealth in advanced democratic societies.
I am not a Jesus freak. But I do believe "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemy" may be the most divinely inspired phrases any human has ever uttered and I believe they say something about his character that suggests a divine nature.
I would prefer shopping at thrift stores and garage sales.